The Internal SPF. The Top 5 Countdown of Best Foods. Number 4.
Posted On June 5, 2018
Ellagic acid. You’ve almost certainly never heard of this component of at least 46 different fruits and nuts.
But it’s a huge cancer fighter found in highest concentrations in strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, pomegranate, walnuts, and pecans.
So yes, it is a cancer fighter also crazy good for your skin. How good?
If you whip up a little baggie of healthy trail mix before hiking in the sun, will this actually help your skin at all? Or will you just end up wishing you’d stuck with your version 1.0 trail mix of M&Ms, Peanut M&Ms, and caramels?
We should talk about the cancer stuff first though, because it’s kind of amazing. The ellagic acids found in these berries and nuts can help protect your DNA from damage and mutations. Mutations are great in zombie movies and sadly outdated explanations for superhero powers. But for you and your skin, they’re definitely on the not invited-to-the-party list.
One of the ways ellagic acid foods safeguard your DNA is by allowing cancer cells to go ahead and die like normal cells do after they’ve lived a long healthy productive life of whatever it is they do all day.
That way, instead of cells going all zombie apocalypse, never dying and eating your organs, they shut down, die, and go to heaven.
Back to your skin, it turns out that ellagic acid can also inhibit the growth of melanoma cells, which are the Darth Vader of skin cancers. Fight them, you must.
Foods with ellagic acid can help you do just that. In fact, in three cancer cell lines investigated, ellagic acid inhibited the growth and spread of them all.
Keep in mind that this protection was found for cells living in a petri dish and, while promising, doesn’t show that eating blackberry pie everyday will help your skin just yet. One particular study did seem to show that oral consumption of pomegranate extract (high in ellagic acid) helped protect the skin from sun burn … but that was just one study.
So far, this all sounds weak so far, except that there’s another aspect to it. You know how when some people get in the sun, they get those brown patches. They’re like little smutty grayish stains, largely on their forehead, cheeks, nose and upper lip.
Exactly zero people want this.
Those face blotches are caused by sun damage which, you guessed it, are prevented AND reversed by eating foods that have ellagic acid in them.
Now I have your attention.
An ellagic acid extract from pomegranate did this by inhibiting the number of dark melanocytes in the epidermis. The result was lightened “freckles and stains” and reduce UV-induced photoaging in the skin.
Bottom line? Eat berries and nuts. They’re not only a mouth explosion of awesome, they help keep your skin from going all blotchy on you.
For more information: Click here to visit Will Clower’s website.
(Visited 1 times, 1 visits today)
About The Author
